PZ Myers. 2005 Apr 08. Kennedy's editorial: Twilight of the Enlightenment?. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/kennedys_editorial_twilight_of_the_enlightenment/>. Accessed 2008 Dec 01.

Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Friday, April 08, 2005

Kennedy's editorial: Twilight of the Enlightenment?

I've put Donald Kennedy's editorial from the latest issue of Science below the fold. It's good. You should read it.

Twilight for the Enlightenment?
Donald Kennedy
Editor-in-Chief

For much of their existence over the past two centuries, Europe and the United States have been societies of questioners: nations in which skepticism has been accepted and even welcomed, and where the culture has been characterized by confidence in science and in rational methods of thought. We owe this tradition in part to the birth of the Scottish Enlightenment of the early 18th century, when the practice of executing religious heretics ended, to be gradually replaced by a developing conviction that substituted faith in experiment for reliance on inherited dogma.

That new tradition, prominently represented by the Scottish philosopher David Hume, supplied important roots for the growth of modernity, and it has served U.S. society well, as it has Europe's. The results of serious, careful experimentation and analysis became a standard for the entry of a discovery or theory into the common culture of citizens and the policies of their governments. Thus, scientific determinations of the age of Earth and the theories of gravity, biological evolution, and the conservation of matter and energy became meaningful scientific anchors of our common understanding.

In the United States, that understanding is now undergoing some dissolution, as some school boards eliminate the teaching of evolution or require that religious versions of creation be represented as "scientific" alternatives. "Intelligent design," a recent replacement for straight-up creationism, essentially asserts that a sufficient quantity of complexity and beauty is by itself evidence of divine origin--a retrogression to the pre-Darwinian zoologist William Paley, who saw in the elegant construction of a beetle's antenna the work of a Creator.

In 1998, I helped the National Academies produce a book entitled Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science. At the press conference announcing its publication, I was asked if I knew that most U.S. citizens did not believe that humans descended from other forms. I said I did, but expressed a hope that things might change. Well, things changed in the wrong direction: Alternatives to the teaching of biological evolution are now being debated in no fewer than 40 states. Worse, evolution is not the only science under such challenge. In several school districts, geology materials are being rewritten because their dates for Earth's age are inconsistent with scripture (too old).

Meanwhile, President Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief policies recommend "evidence-based" risk-reduction strategies: abstinence for youth, fidelity for married couples, and condoms recommended only for infected or high-risk individuals, such as sex workers. Failure rates for condoms are commonly quoted, apparently to discourage their use by young people for risk prevention. Mysteriously, the policy doesn't seem able to cite a failure rate for abstinence.

Finally, certain kinds of science are now proscribed on what amount to religious grounds. Stem cell research is said by its opponents to pose a "moral dilemma." Yet this well-advertised dilemma does not arise from a confrontation between science and ethical universals. Instead, the objections arise from a particular belief about what constitutes a human life: a belief held by certain religions but not by others. Some researchers, eager to resolve the problem, seek to derive stem cells by techniques that might finesse the controversy. But the claim that the stem cell "dilemma" rests on universal values is a false claim, and for society to accept it to obtain transitory political relief would bring church and state another step closer.

The present wave of evangelical Christianity, uniquely American in its level of participation, would be nothing to worry about were it a matter restricted to individual conviction and to the expressions of groups gathering to worship. It's all right that in the best-selling novels about the "rapture," the true believers ascend and the rest of us perish painfully. But U.S. society is now experiencing a convergence between religious conviction and partisan loyalty, readily detectable in the statistics of the 2004 election. Some of us who worry about the separation of church and state will accept tablets that display the Ten Commandments on state premises, because they fail to cross a threshold of urgency. But when the religious/political convergence leads to managing the nation's research agenda, its foreign assistance programs, or the high-school curriculum, that marks a really important change in our national life. Twilight for the Enlightenment? Not yet. But as its beneficiaries, we should also be its stewards.

Posted by PZ Myers on 04/08 at 01:25 PM
Creationism • Politics • Science • 4 Trackbacks • Other weblogs • Permalink
  1. Excellent, and unfortunately accurate. It is nice to see people from all corners reminding us that we really dont want to go back to a barbaric theocratic society.
    #: Posted by  on  04/08  at  01:44 PM
  2. Many moral choices are not, or at least have not always been, based on "universal values". Indeed, the Enlightenment could be seen to be based somewhat upon this observation. There is nothing inherently wrong about fighting over the morality of stem cell research, even if it's generally fought at the wrong point.

    Apart from that issue (which I don't wish to get into other than to grant legitimacy to both sides), however, I'm quite in agreement with Donald Kennedy. The sad thing about evolution is that it decidedly does not select for reason over prejudice, expediency, social competition, and wishful thinking. I have always had the sneaking suspicion that it is the Enlightenment which is the aberration in human thought, while reliance on authority, political power, and human prejudice were bound to win out in the end.

    I was hoping for later rather than sooner, though. The usefulness of good thinking to the economy, the military, and to social order, seems to have been enough to bring our rational capacities to the fore during a couple of centuries at least. It may be that we're squandering our general reasoning through specialization, however, so that engineers (to pick on prominent IDers), mathematicians, and even some physicists can use reason and science in their own niches, while abandoning good methodologies for comforting myths outside of their specialties.

    We could limp along for a while continuing to use Enlightenment methods in specialized areas, while the usefulness of reasoned methodologies in general declines. The selective value of the Enlightenment in general decays and becomes irrelevant to most people even as it remains important to them in a specialized sense. The specialists may continue to excel as individuals, while as a society we decline in ability to understand science overall.

    Everything evolves, and as we all know, it isn't always progress. It's up to us to try to effect progress in society, and not allow it to merely evolve.
    #: Posted by  on  04/08  at  01:59 PM
  3. Glenn,

    You have made some interesting ponderances above, and introduced the idea of a post-Enlightenment as a further step, as opposed to a return to the Middle Ages as I had implied.

    You have piqued my interest and I am curious if you have some vision of how the post-Enlightenment future might play out. This idea that it may not be a step backward strikes me as against the wishes of the theocracy we are currently resisting.
    #: Posted by  on  04/08  at  02:18 PM
  4. Which school boards eliminated the
    teaching of evolution?
    This is stated as fact.
    #: Posted by  on  04/08  at  02:20 PM
  5. They don't have to. They simply make the matter ambiguous enough so that rural high school teachers, who may not know enough about the blood clotting cascade to feel comfortable calling Behe on his bullshit, will be bullied into not teaching it.

    That's the point of all this deemphasize stuff. They don't have to outlaw it. They only have to inject false doubt. They leave it to local activists to outlaw it. It's a wink and a nudge - teach the controversy (there is none) - and evolution isn't taught in Protection, KS.

    It's for this reason that state and national standards are so important. It's for this reason that education experts need to be very outspoken in stating the facts about evolution and intelligent design, verified science for the former and creationism for the latter.

    This is not an innocuous thought experiment the IDCers are proposing. It's dog whistle politics.

    BCH

    PS - My word today is pseudogene. Does PZ get to setup the verification words himself or am I just really lucky today?
    #: Posted by Burt Humburg  on  04/08  at  02:44 PM
  6. Joel:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/aug99/creation12.htm

    This article is dated 1999.
    #: Posted by  on  04/08  at  02:49 PM
  7. This would be more heartwarming if Science hadn't for years published the "reporting" of a certain Mark Plummer on ecological issues, particularly dealing with endangered species. Who is Mark Plummer? He's an economist and the coauthor of a couple of books, one of which, Noah's Choice, argues for weakening the U.S. Endangered Species Act. He also happens to be a "senior fellow" at the ID "think tank" Discovery Institute: http://www.discovery.org/environment/fellows/MarkPlummer/
    #: Posted by  on  04/08  at  02:59 PM
  8. ....the practice of executing religious heretics ended, to be gradually replaced by a developing conviction that substituted faith in experiment for reliance on inherited dogma.

    That new tradition, prominently represented by the Scottish philosopher David Hume,


    I understand that when most people think of the Scottish Enlightenment they just think of Hume - but seriously, couldn't they have picked a better choice here?

    I mean, it's not precisely mistaken, but if you want an example of faith in experiment I'd suggest that perhaps Reid or one of the other members of the group might have been just a little more appropriate...
    #: Posted by Dr Pretorius  on  04/08  at  03:06 PM
  9. Kennedy's editorial hits the nail on the head, but most readers of Science are members of his choir—and the few who aren't will ignore it. However, Kennedy erred in one minor respect: The purveyors of anti-enlightenment values are mostly fundamentalists, not evangelicals. I, and many others, are prone to lump the two together, but they're not one and the same, although there is overlap. Evangelicals embody missionary zeal (I even know some who accept evolution and with whom I can have a rational conversation) but not all of them are fundamentalists with faith in the literal truth of the Christian bible. An example of that kind of evangeligcal is Richard Colling, chair of the Dept of Biology at Oliven Nazarene University, who in his book Random Designer arguing for the validity of evolution wrote "It pains me to suggest that my religious brothers are telling falsehoods."
    #: Posted by  on  04/08  at  03:26 PM
  10. ... and Science also seems to uncritically accept the nonsense that soft tissues- Tyrannosaur cells with nuclei- are preserved after 65 million years.

    What is going on out there? Doesn't legitimate peer review exist? If so, why did this nonsense get to press before the material was isotopically dated?

    If that was Tyrannosaur soft tissue I'm a velociraptor.

    And I'm not.
    #: Posted by kelley b.  on  04/08  at  03:30 PM
  11. kelley b.--

    How did velociraptor soft tissue get inside the bone of a tyrannosaur?

    Seriously, though, given the apparent presence of blood vessels, what are you suggesting this tissue is??
    #: Posted by  on  04/08  at  03:46 PM
  12. well, one thing the Internet and blogging is good for is echoing ideas. we post and repost the links and maybe people who don't normally read the editorials in Science Magazine will get to read it.
    #: Posted by bj delacruz  on  04/08  at  04:34 PM
  13. Desert D wrote:
    introduced the idea of a post-Enlightenment as a further step, as opposed to a return to the Middle Ages as I had implied.

    Oh, it could be a "return" to the Dark Ages all right. The Dark Ages repeat, but they're always going to be different. The Greeks had their famous Dark Age between the fall of the Mycenaeans and the time of Homer, but of course the Europeans didn't repeat those Dark Ages.

    Anyhow, I might be too gloomy, taking my cue from the title and tone of the article. There aren't very many scientists supporting ID at this time, not even those furthest from biology. Likewise with Republican (I wish I could be more "even-handed" on this, but don't think I can be) anti-environmentalism, most of science isn't fooled. Yet the influence of those relying on the few ID and anti-environmental "authorities" do have a great deal of influence, and this in a nation that actually tends to think quite highly of science.

    The fact that the US seems actually to have fewer anti-science intellectuals in it (possibly because of creationism in the US) than we see in Europe might be our saving grace. The problem is that here one may finance an "alternative science", claim to be the underdog, produce a few "experts", and many people will root for the "new Galileos". It's a frustrating fact, made harder because the mountains of evidence for evolution tend to be technical, while the sound bite attacks on accessible-to-the-layman homologies and vestigial organs sound plausible to many not well aquainted with science.

    For that and other reasons, any new dark age would have to be considerably different from past ones. The engineers and some on the "hard science" side think that they are genuinely fighting for science, since they have learned how to design complex machines and processes, and they do not think beyond themselves as the "agents" necessary to produce complex integrated entities. I should point out, too, that the metaphysical aspect of philosophy has not been quenched as well in the Anglo-American world as on the continent, and I even ran into a book review by Christof Koch in Science last fall (October or November) that claimed that science is based on metaphysics. If it is, shoot the beast, I say. Fortunately, though, Koch, and Searle who he was reviewing (and obviously believing) are incorrect, and science is not based in metaphysics.

    We could slowly drift into guilds of scientists, some believing in metaphysics, some believing in process. The desire for more and more healthcare is on the side of those thinking in terms of change and process, while the increasing reliance on set technique in engineering, design, and even in today's physics, will tend to have people thinking that eternal truths reign. If we do get into competing scientific guilds and methods, which IDists may be a prelude to, the fallout will tend to be a discrediting of both sides of science in the public eye.

    You have piqued my interest and I am curious if you have some vision of how the post-Enlightenment future might play out. This idea that it may not be a step backward strikes me as against the wishes of the theocracy we are currently resisting.

    Nietzsche said that God is dead during a period of increasing religiosity. That's all it was, though, enhanced religious sentiment, not a great amount of spirituality.

    Theocracy could be the upshot no matter that God is almost certainly as dead as He was a century and a half ago. Religion seems not to need God or spirituality to have power. Yet the diversity of religion is on our side. A little bit of power gained, and the various religions will be at each others' throats. The Catholics and fundamentalists still aren't the best of allies, and probably will not be any time soon. Philip Johnson came up with his big tent of ID precisely to try to cobble together a politically strong collection of theists, but the cracks in the framework are ready to become faultlines at any time.

    God is still dead, and this is crucial to any future "dark age" or post-enlightenment decadence. The IDists have the philosophers' God, the unknowable God lacking in attributes, precisely because this God is beyond science. Yet they make Him into an engineer and "designer" of machines in order to claim to be able to find his handiwork. It's an old preachers' Enlightenment strategy, however it gains nothing in the hands of mathematicians and engineers. It is really the repudiation of God as anything truly effective in a spiritual manner, for they no longer are telling of God breathing spirit into Adam. Instead God makes a cyborg, essentially, designing the "molecular machines" of life in a manner which is detectable through SETI concepts of intelligence. Sometimes they actually say that the designer could be an alien, and in a sense this is true, since God has lost his spiritual power in their eyes.

    I think what I'm trying to get to is that religion remains a force in society, but religious adherents are more likely to believe in a kind of sci-fi religion as anything traditional. Richard Bartholomew and Hugh Ross believe in UFOs, only they're "Satanic". Perhaps more important is that they're not thinking in terms of Satan appearing as a spiritual being, but rather as cyborg, as designer, as the Gnostic demon who might be responbible at least for nasty forms of life. This mirrors life becoming mere matter in the hands of the engineer-God to the IDist, even as the IDists incoherently accuse science of being "materialistic" or "naturalistic". Religion is merging with Star Trek, which maybe is how the US generally remains pro-science in attitude, while remaining altogether too open to pseudoscience.

    Almost no part of society is going to relinquish any section of science that works for themselves, though, because they need bits and pieces of science economically and as authority for their ideas, no matter how improperly they may use this science. That's why I think John Rennie may not be altogether correct in his pitch of evolution to the universities, since I can easily see a Behe working in the biotech industry with his belief in designed life. After all, isn't biotech industry about designing life? And Behe merges descent by modification with his ideas of "design", which allows him to accept as much science as he wants, while discarding the basis for his science.

    Scientific method in general could break apart into scientific methods in particular, allowing for progress in the science along the same lines as have occurred before. It is the new thought, the new science that probably is most threatened by the merging of sci-fi, religion, and science into incoherent scientific specialties. We had fairly uniform and general concepts of science among the educated populace of the Enlightenment, while Dembski and the IDists, along with assorted non-ID cranks, utilize scientific specialties to discredit the general theory of evolution. The latter was/is a unifier of science, correlating biology, geology, chemistry, and physics, in a reasonable and intelligent manner. But specialists, like biochemist Behe, and mathematician Dembski, assert the superiority of their scientific knowledge over the communal knowledge given to us by evolutionary thought.

    We might very well hold together for much longer, if we're lucky and not complacent. But the competition between departments that has always existed has erupted into a politically-charged fight over curriculum, which threatens decadence for science no matter how tightly specialists cling to their versions of science. Old ideas of sci-fi, religion, and science merge, while new fractures open up in science itself, as it evolves beyond the grasp of the ordinary mind. Neither science nor religion will disappear, but they could solidify and become written methods (sacred text), instead of spiritual, creative entities (well, religion was once, though that was long ago). Conservation of one's own knowledge is always the risk to creative processes, and even the maturing and aging of today's societies plays into those tendencies.

    I don't know how it will all turn out, and have few if any real predictions. End of the Roman Empire is a possibility, but recall how long that took. The magical superstitions that arose then are unlikely to appear in any foreseeable future, because the ghosts have been explained (unless one still looks for the very most tenuous and ineffectual ghosts yet, as some do), and our machines work far better than does any magic. We should have useful machines for a very long time, I would think.

    It's the slow decline of unifying reason and universal knowledge that we face, and we may be able to stave it off for a while yet. No sudden collapses, no witch hunts in the foreseeable future. An erosion, factional claims made regarding science, religion, and law, and attempts to "have the freedom" to believe and teach children whatever garbage there is in the sectarians' minds.

    The forces of unity have been declining for some time, from what I have seen, in economic and tax policies, and in calls for "alternative ideas". Of course the latter can be quite beneficial, but to most people this means that anything goes, that an "alternative" need not be based on collective, unified knowledge found in science and in other disciplines. Science, as the ultimate unifier, is bound to get caught up in the decline of community-wide beliefs, both because it threatens alternative claims, and because it seems unimportant to the struggles people individually undergo in society. Superstitions of a sort will have to replace science, but they will almost certainly have to be based in technology or in a factionalized scientism. For no one believes much in spirit any more, least of all the mechanistic thinkers of ID.
    #: Posted by  on  04/08  at  04:48 PM
  14. GD, Thanks. Interesting stuff to chew on.
    #: Posted by  on  04/08  at  04:59 PM
  15. Actually science perished shortly after the beginning of the Second World War when fundamental physics became state secrets. A fellow named Zworykin killed democracy. Literature was murdered in the most humiliating way possible, that is, strangled by a couple of clowns: Mickey Mouse and Sonny Bono.
    #: Posted by  on  04/08  at  05:05 PM
  16. ... and Science also seems to uncritically accept the nonsense that soft tissues- Tyrannosaur cells with nuclei- are preserved after 65 million years.

    What is going on out there? Doesn't legitimate peer review exist? If so, why did this nonsense get to press before the material was isotopically dated?


    The facts that it was published, and was peer-reviewed, and hasn't yet been chalanged by someone who knows what they're taking about(creationist idiots don't count) means that the evidence for what the paper claims the specimen to be is very strong. Also this wasn't published by some hack, these people are paleontologist, they know what is and isn't a dinosaur bone, and how old the rocks are and understand the general limitations of preservation in those rocks and so forth.
    #: Posted by  on  04/08  at  05:15 PM
  17. I even ran into a book review by Christof Koch in Science last fall (October or November) that claimed that science is based on metaphysics. If it is, shoot the beast, I say. Fortunately, though, Koch, and Searle who he was reviewing (and obviously believing) are incorrect, and science is not based in metaphysics.


    I can't believe how many times I have to say this sort of thing to scientists and science minded people:
    1. Yes, science is based in metaphysics.
    2. No, that is not a bad thing.
    3. No, that in no way causes a problem for science.
    4. No, metaphysics is not the sort of thing you find in the "metaphysics" section of the bookstore.
    5. Yes, professionally trained philosophers do generally have expertise in these sorts of things.
    #: Posted by Dr Pretorius  on  04/08  at  05:27 PM
  18. But did the Enlightment itself (not simply its products) ever have that broad a reach - or at least a very patchy, unreflective allegiance once you went out past the intellectual city center, so to speak?
    #: Posted by Dan S.  on  04/08  at  05:40 PM
  19. I'm with Pretorius. Science can be said to be based in metaphysics, inasmuch as it has no tools to investigate last-thursdayism, the supernatural, living in the Matrix, brains in vats, etc. So, it can be said to have certain metaphysical underpinnings or, using clunky language, science is based in metaphysics.

    But two things are worth noting. First, generally speaking, it is not useful for scientists to acknowledge those metaphysical underpinnings. It only becomes useful when you are dealing with creationists or pot smokers who've just watched the Matrix or whatever. When talking with other scientists who don't care about that kind of thing, then it's non-essential and one can neglect it from consideration altogether. That's why I think scientists should be facultatively metaphysical about what it is that they do.

    The second thing is that intelligent design creationism has not proven itself to be a useful model of the world. (In fact, there's much evidence to indicate it sabotages the process of discovery.) For this reason, we can reject it on practical grounds even while the pot smokers and creationists are kinda sorta arguing against evolution on metaphysical grounds.

    BCH
    #: Posted by Burt Humburg  on  04/08  at  06:02 PM
  20. 1. Yes, science is based in metaphysics.

    Metaphysicians have such beliefs. They don't care how important it has been to quit believing in metaphysics for the sake of the advancement of physics, how neo-Kantianism and other roughly anti-metaphysical philosophies helped science to escape its straightjacket of metaphysics, they still believe in metaphysics.

    It can't be helped, it's in the curriculum. Not at the universities I went to, true, but in most curricula. And the same old texts are taught to the same gullible students, never mind that Nietzsche and others showed how dull, insipid, and wrong, metaphysics is.

    If anyone wants to see how little physics is based in metaphysics, read something like Physics Today. Physics especially cannot put up with the a priori assumptions of metaphysics, for it has to explain how phenomena like "causality" appear to exist.

    2. No, that is not a bad thing.

    Since it isn't true, no it is not a bad thing. Stodgy analytic philosophers want to cast their gloom over physics, but physicists typically don't make the mistake of caring.

    3. No, that in no way causes a problem for science.

    It would be a problem if true. Many areas of science can act as if metaphysics were the basis (they can believe in "causality", for instance) and do just fine, but metaphysics is as much an impediment to some areas of science as ID is an impediment to biology.

    4. No, metaphysics is not the sort of thing you find in the "metaphysics" section of the bookstore.

    Of course not, it's in the "old truths" section. Aristotle, Aquinas, whoever. Good thinkers for their time, hardly relevant to the age of quantum physics.

    5. Yes, professionally trained philosophers do generally have expertise in these sorts of things.

    Professionally trained philosophers can be extremely opposed to metaphysics. To tell the truth, most have some metaphysical beliefs lurking in their heads, but a Deleuze, Foucault, and especially a Nietzsche know exactly what is wrong with metaphysics, no matter what questionable ideas they might harbor (Nietzsche the least, then Deleuze, IMO).

    Anyhow, it's just like I said, in the US you'll get these defenses of a metaphysics that couldn't hold its own for at least 150 years. Logocentrism, onto-theological beliefs, however one wishes to characterize them, they're the menace to science that resides in the halls of academia.
    #: Posted by  on  04/08  at  06:12 PM
  21. Here's what Koch wrote:

    "Such fundamental notions as reality, space, time, and causality--notions found at the core of the scientific enterprise--all rely on particular metaphysical assumptions about the world" Christof Kock, "Thinking About the Conscious Mind," 979-980 Science v.306 5 Nov. 2004. p. 979.

    We don't have to believe in reality to do science, and in fact phenomenological stances are not rare among physicists. "Realism" in particular is hardly the basis of physics.

    Space and time are dimensions that can be and are studied empirically. That we might use some of the barest assumptions to "construct" space and time is true enough, but that is true of making any declarative statement about any observation. We do physics, not metaphysics, with the dimensions, which is why we can go beyond Kant and envision multiple spatial dimensions. And even Kant thought that metaphysics was abysmal, even though he didn't even come close to ridding himself of metaphysical prejudices.

    And of course causality hasn't been a fundamental part of physics in years. In some sense it might be thought to hold, but only as a construct reflecting issues like conservation of energy and interactions that are relatively conservative of information. Even this deconstructible construct makes little sense in quantum physics.

    There really isn't anything to be gained by belief in metaphysics, and it only undergirds the beliefs of creationists and IDists. Were we rid of metaphysics we'd almost certainly be less troubled by IDists and others.
    #: Posted by  on  04/08  at  06:37 PM
  22. bj delacruz said: "...maybe people who don't normally read the editorials in Science Magazine will get to read it."

    Or people like me, who get the e-letter but don't have the cash to pay for access, so have to make do with the abstracts/summaries.

    Thanks, PZ.
    #: Posted by Linkmeister  on  04/08  at  06:50 PM
  23. Abstinence has a remarkably high success rate! One one man born out of less than the 4000 years of life on earth! (and even then, he wasn't a man, he was the son of god...)

    Generally speaking, if you get knocked up, you're not abstaining. It doesn't fail in the same way as contraceptives.
    #: Posted by icecube  on  04/08  at  07:56 PM
  24. ... given the apparent presence of blood vessels, what are you suggesting this tissue is??

    A fraud if it's claimed to be 65 million years old. Biological tissues oxidize. If nothing else.

    Cells with nuclei? Membranes made of what- unsaturated phospholipids? Huh? After 65 million years?

    What is wrong with that picture?

    Any decent reviewer in biomedical science would demand they carbon date the thing. How much carbon-14?

    Sorry to be off topic- but if a premier Science journal won't critique somebody's cool work, somebody has to, even us moonbats.

    It's very similar to ostrich, so use Occam's razor.
    #: Posted by kelley b.  on  04/08  at  08:04 PM
  25. Oh, and incidently, philosophers out there, science is physical, reality based.

    Not metaphysical.

    What is metaphysical?

    [url="http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=metaphysical&x=17&y=14"]Main Entry: meta·phys·i·cal
    Pronunciation: -'fi-zi-k&l
    Function: adjective
    1 : of or relating to metaphysics
    2 a : of or relating to the transcendent or to a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses b : SUPERNATURAL[/url]

    Not science!
    #: Posted by kelley b.  on  04/08  at  08:09 PM
  26. Among the 10 states not facing any special turmoil over evolution in the classroom is Hawaii.

    If about an eighth of your respectable population is Buddhist, then the manners of the evangelical/Fundamentalist improve immeasurably, compared to places (like Tennessee) where they can safely accuse any opponents of being bad Christians.

    Since we're never going to get rid of religion, go for a leavening of Buddhists.

    The distinction some make between evangelicals and Fundamentalist is mostly irrelevant. Nothing stops a believer from being both, and among the agitating faction, most are both.
    #: Posted by  on  04/08  at  08:24 PM
  27. A better reference would be to the word
    metaphysics
    1 a : METAPHYSICS b : a particular system of metaphysics
    2 : the system of principles underlying a particular study or subject : PHILOSOPHY

    Then perhaps you'll see why there is some confusion in the discussion.

    I'd suggest a better understanding of how a philosopher would use the word before buying into the argument.
    From Wikipedia
    Metaphysics (Greek words meta = after/beyond and physics = nature) is a branch of philosophy concerned with the study of "first principles" and "being" (ontology).

    Problems that were not originally considered metaphysical have been added to metaphysics. Other problems that were considered metaphysical problems for centuries are now typically relegated to their own separate subheadings in philosophy, such as philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, philosophy of perception, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science.
    ...
    In modern times, the meaning of the word metaphysics has become confused by popular significations that are really unrelated metaphysics or ontology per se, viz. esoterism and occultism. Esoterism and occultism, in their many forms, are not so much concerned with inquiries into first principles or the nature of being, though they do tend to proceed on the metaphysical assumption that all being is "one".


    I suspect that most of the argument here is really over the definition of the word.
    #: Posted by Virge  on  04/08  at  08:37 PM
  28. I'd like to clarify a point for some of the persons posting on this board. Science, as a peer-reviewed journal, serves as an arm of the American Association for the Advancement of Science by publicly presenting the hypotheses, methods, results, and conclusions of principle researchers in the sciences. The initial peer-review process is by invited reviewers serving as an editorial board for Science. Full peer-review only occurs AFTER an article is published in Science, or any other journal, since that is the point in time when the original research of the author(s) is made available to the whole of the audience. The editors of Science may or may not agree with the methods, results, or conclusions of any author(s) but do have a responsibility to report submitted manuscripts that meet the editorial standards of the journal. As a long time reader, and member of AAAS, I'm content with the way the journal operates. Whether or not the editorial board and review panel of Science actually think that soft-tissue of T rex exists is a moot point; the responsibility is for the larger scientific community to respond to the article, as peers reviewing one of our own.
    #: Posted by  on  04/08  at  08:41 PM
  29. "It's very similar to ostrich, so use Occam's razor. "

    A ostrich dug out of 70 million years old rock, that just so happens to be part of a T. rex specimen? Occam's razor huh? Whats that about again? Oh yes the simplist way to prove someone is an idiot.
    #: Posted by  on  04/08  at  08:58 PM
  30. Linkmeister, I have to ask: Is your gravatar an image of Joe Btfsplk, of Lil Abner fame?

    Icecube said: "Abstinence has a remarkably high success rate!"

    Agreed, the PRACTICE of abstinence has a high success rate. The POLICY of abstinence (or of teaching abstinence) has a high enough failure rate that backing it up with other techniques already known to have an effect -- such as condoms, contraceptives, family planning assistance, sex education, etc. -- makes a great deal of sense.
    #: Posted by Hank Fox  on  04/09  at  02:06 AM
  31. The fact that the US seems actually to have fewer anti-science intellectuals in it (possibly because of creationism in the US) than we see in Europe might be our saving grace.


    Glen, can you perhaps be bit more specific? I don't run into much anti-science among intellectuals, and I don't think you'll find that many places in Europe. It certainly happened in the past, but now most people seem to consider science a valuable asset.
    The anti-science crowd seems to be mostly (American) politicians and economists, and then only most on issues like global warming and evolution (in the US).
    Cloning seems to have created some controversy, but not particularly among intellectuals, and stem cell research seems to be doing fine in Europe.

    Genetically modified food is not popular in the EU, but again, that's not a stance specificly among intellectuals, rather it's a general stance in the population. And, I should probably say, not particularly against the science behind the modifications. It rathr focuses on the fact that the side-effects are not fully understod, and that in such matters it's important to err on the side ofsafety.
    #: Posted by  on  04/09  at  03:36 AM
  32. Glenn; I'm a bit confused by some of the things you say about metaphysics. Could you explain what it would be to have a 'belief in metaphysics'? While i would accept that to do science doesn't in itself require one take any position on the various issues that anglo-american philosophers bracket under metaphysics, a fuller account of what one is doing surely does. This will be particularly relevant if one wants to identify what it is that IDists are getting wrong - the alternative is to simply state that they are not doing science; that isn't, for example, going to help with issues such as why it is wrong to teach ID.
    #: Posted by  on  04/09  at  05:44 AM
  33. I couldn't possible agree more with Kennedy's article. While few scientists fall for charades such as Intelligent Design, that fact doesn't matter anymore. Technocracy is dead in the West and will take immense effort to resurrect. In the United States, the Republican Party is overtly anti-scientific, and the Democratic Party follows the Republican Party; even the various reform movementss inside American liberalism, most prominently Lakoffianism and the religious left, are largely anti-rationalist.
    #: Posted by  on  04/09  at  06:18 AM
  34. The inadequacy of abstinence as a policy can best be illustrated by reference to the best policy to minimize road deaths, keeping to slow speeds or not driving at all. Everyone knows that would avoid almost all road deaths but how effective will it be as a policy? People will still speed---and cause deaths when they make mistakes, so that's why we build safer roads, mandate seat belts, air bags, and crushable front ends, all of which function like condoms. Sex is similar. Abstinence is fine in theory but no one abstains (and I would guess not even in monasteries and convents) so condoms should be widely available, easy to use, and clearly explained to young people. Their promotion has nothing to do with morals or keeping oneself "pure" until marriage. They are society's safety belts and air bags!
    #: Posted by  on  04/09  at  07:53 AM
  35. Kristjan:

    Redefining science to include the study of the non-natural or supernatural, such as what the ID creationists want, would be to take us back to the Dark Ages. Anyone endorsing this radical change in science would certainly merit the description antiscience.

    BCH
    #: Posted by Burt Humburg  on  04/09  at  09:22 AM
  36. Burt, I don't disagree with you, but I am a bit puzzled why you are addressing me. This is not a tendency I see among European intellectuals.
    #: Posted by  on  04/09  at  09:37 AM

  37. Redefining science to include the study of the non-natural or supernatural, such as what the ID creationists want, would be to take us back to the Dark Ages. Anyone endorsing this radical change in science would certainly merit the description antiscience.





    Hmmmm.... if such a redefinition of science is good enough for public school science curricula, then it is certainly good enough for the courtroom.

    I'll keep that in mind the next time I'm called up for jury duty...
    #: Posted by  on  04/09  at  11:05 AM
  38. But two things are worth noting. First, generally speaking, it is not useful for scientists to acknowledge those metaphysical underpinnings....

    I think this, though I suspect it needs a little clarification, is precisely on the money. Scientists do not need to concern themselves - when doing science - with metaphysical questions. This is, straightforwardly, because metaphysical questions are outside the purview of science (no physics experiment is going to tell you whether or not to be a scientific realist about theoretical entities - or at least you'd be heading into fishy waters if you thought it did, to painfully mix metaphors). (Ok, yes, I'm well aware that this sort of thing has in the past done so -- brownian motion being a really good example -- but the point is that it shouldn't.) More accurately, even, they tend to form the structure within which scientific discussions can happen at all - creationism, despite it's attempts to be called scientific, is not scientific precisely for this reason.

    Well, that reason and that it's complete nonsense.


    Metaphysicians have such beliefs. They don't care how important it has been to quit believing in metaphysics for the sake of the advancement of physics, how neo-Kantianism and other roughly anti-metaphysical philosophies helped science to escape its straightjacket of metaphysics, they still believe in metaphysics.


    This on the other hand is perplexing and wierd. First off, metaphysicians do obviously have beliefs (being, um, people) but I don't see how anyone else could fail to believe that physics is based in metaphysics. Even describing what physics does amounts to metaphysics. Secondly, um, Neo-Kantianism (neo? you mean like McDowell?) is not what I'd call anti-metaphysical. At the least it's only as anti-metaphysical as Kantianism, which had some fairly substantive metaphysical theses last time I checked. Metaphysics is a discipline. It's not something one can 'believe in' in any more sense than one can 'believe in' psychology or perhaps the mets. Seriously here, metaphysics is not a freaking position.

    Lastly,
    We don't have to believe in reality to do science, and in fact phenomenological stances are not rare among physicists. "Realism" in particular is hardly the basis of physics.


    Um, rather obviously one must believe in reality to do science - otherwise one would have a hell of a time experimenting. "Gosh, I'd go check the partical accelerator and get some data on this but there is no such thing as reality and I don't exist." Come on here - the metaphysical debate would be about the nature of reality - both realism and anti-realism are metaphysical positions. They just entail different meanings when it comes to interpreting scientific theories.
    #: Posted by Dr Pretorius  on  04/09  at  03:13 PM
  39. An example of pseudo-science babbling is how one commenter here proposed carbon-dating a dinosaur bone. Uhm, 50,000 years (the max limit of Carbon-14 dating) isn't going to date any dinosaur bones, since the dinosaurs died off far more than 50,000 years ago... but hey, this cretonist (creationist) babbler did his job, which was to confuse people with little scientific knowledge via babbling of seemingly scientific words... too bad the readers here generally know at least a LITTLE science and ignored the cretonist, but the problem is that the general public is not so well educated, especially with the destruction of science teaching in the United States over the past 30 years...

    - Badtux the Babbling Penguin
    #: Posted by BadTux  on  04/09  at  07:07 PM
  40. Bad Tux, where's your evidence that Kelley B is a creationist rather than just someone who didn't know about the 50,000 year limit for carbon dating?
    #: Posted by Alon Levy  on  04/10  at  01:50 AM
  41. Glen, can you perhaps be bit more specific? I don't run into much anti-science among intellectuals, and I don't think you'll find that many places in Europe.

    I don't either, but there are continental philosophies that are philosophically opposed to the ideas utilized by science. Anyway, I included my sense that probably more intellectuals in Europe were anti-science than in America not only because I really do think that there is less intellectual anti-science in America, but also in order to balance out my criticisms of Anglo-American philosophy and its tendency to agree with metaphysics. It's sort of ironic, because if I'm right there is more anti-science sentiment in Europe, but rather less belief in the metaphysical nonsense that distorts science. I could be wrong at that.

    Here's a couple of links suggesting the problems in continental philosophy for science:

    http://fuckfrance.com/read.html?postid=862174

    http://human-nature.com/reason/books/sokal-bricmont.html

    The first address includes an opinion with which I do not agree, and much of the article is lame at best, too. But it is written by a German who seems to have a grasp of some of the anti-science tendencies of German philosophies, which one would not expect to have disappeared by this time.

    The second attacks French philosophers more so. And it hits harder than I would, since I do think that Deleuze and Guattari write some credible philosophy. Derrida, even, to some extent. But they're not terribly pro-scientific method, at best. While the book review does point out that American disciples of such philosophers exist, of course the actual mindset that produced Continental philosophy exists on the continent for the most part. Derrida probably remains more popular in America at present precisely because Americans don't understand the context of his writings at all well.

    Anyhow, the point wasn't in the least to suggest that the Europeans are likely to do worse science or to be more effectively anti-scientific, it really was based more on my sense that anti-scientific attitudes in Europe are less philosophically naive.
    #: Posted by  on  04/10  at  05:28 PM
  42. While i would accept that to do science doesn't in itself require one take any position on the various issues that anglo-american philosophers bracket under metaphysics, a fuller account of what one is doing surely does.

    Why? Why are Kant, Nietzsche, and Husserl all wrong about this? What has metaphysics ever done other than to suggest that we know absolutes when we do not? And why do supporters of metaphysics fail to show any value or worth to metaphysics, but resort only to claiming "what we all know" as if the latter attitude is not the enemy of science?
    #: Posted by  on  04/10  at  05:33 PM
  43. First off, metaphysicians do obviously have beliefs (being, um, people) but I don't see how anyone else could fail to believe that physics is based in metaphysics.

    Then learn some non-metaphysical philosophy, and quit relying on your incredulity and lack of knowledge as the measure of truth. You only assert, you don't deal with anything having to do with either physics or metaphysics.


    Even describing what physics does amounts to metaphysics.

    You can assert your metaphysical beliefs all you want, and they'll never be worth any more than ID. Obviously you have nothing of worth to bring to the discussion.

    Secondly, um, Neo-Kantianism (neo? you mean like McDowell?) is not what I'd call anti-metaphysical. At the least it's only as anti-metaphysical as Kantianism, which had some fairly substantive metaphysical theses last time I checked.

    Which I acknowledged. But at least it gave up naive realism, which is more than I can say for your position.

    Metaphysics is a discipline. It's not something one can 'believe in' in any more sense than one can 'believe in' psychology or perhaps the mets.

    Oh right, a bunch of onto-theological claptrap is a discipline. It can only be believed in, for it has nothing to base its claims upon. Naturally you avoided all of the appropriate criticisms, only to restate your meaningless bald assertions for your beliefs.

    Seriously here, metaphysics is not a freaking position.

    You haven't shown it to be anything else.

    Um, rather obviously one must believe in reality to do science - otherwise one would have a hell of a time experimenting. "Gosh, I'd go check the partical accelerator and get some data on this but there is no such thing as reality and I don't exist." Come on here - the metaphysical debate would be about the nature of reality - both realism and anti-realism are metaphysical positions. They just entail different meanings when it comes to interpreting scientific theories.

    Your "argument" is as credible as the claim that evolution is as religious as ID, or that lack of a God is simply the counterpoint to being a theist. Apparently you live in a binary world, where if one recognizes the meaninglessness of a word like "reality" in any metaphysical sense (while in the common sense it retains meaning) one is automatically being metaphysical. This is why it is of little worth arguing with metaphysicians, since they already have categorized everything to fit their beliefs. If one questions such unwarranted assumptions, one is immediately cast into the metaphysician's image of the world.

    So yes, you must believe that scientists have to believe in reality to do science. A good many philosophers and scientists know otherwise. I have to be aware of this, for I was required to read physicists' phenomenological and anti-realist positions in the Philosophy of Science class that I had as an undergrad. Perhaps I am to believe that what the physicists wrote was in fact not "real".

    And really, I'm out of this discussion now. I've brought up good points, and you've merely made assertions. Let it be that way, then.
    #: Posted by  on  04/10  at  05:54 PM
  44. Glenn - my question was genuine. it's just that I understand metaphysics to be a subdiscipline of philosophy. given that, it's not really clear what it would be to have a belief in it. i suppose one could have a belief in it in the sense in which one could have a belief in physics... but physics has a more clearly defined method of enquiry, and so that doesn't help to much.

    On the other hand, if we read 'metaphysics' as 'naive realism', your points make more sense. This also allows us to understand how you have misunderstood pretorius's last point: most anti-realist positions don't deny that there is any kind of reality. phenomenologists certainly don't; their disagreement with naive-realism is over the nature of reality. to continue pretorius's last example, the phenomenologist can accept that there is an particle accelerator (that such things are amongst those that are real) - it's just that the accelerator is a collection of dispositions for experience, or somesuch. That's why we get Berkeley, a phenomenologist, saying 'The table I write on I say exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study I should say it existed- meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might [my italics] perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it' in his Treatise. In the sense in which pretorius is using the term, it is true that one must have a belief in reality to do science - and the phenomenalist scientists you mention very probably do. Metaphysics is the study of reality in this sense.
    #: Posted by  on  04/11  at  02:03 AM
  45. I don't either, but there are continental philosophies that are philosophically opposed to the ideas utilized by science. Anyway, I included my sense that probably more intellectuals in Europe were anti-science than in America not only because I really do think that there is less intellectual anti-science in America, but also in order to balance out my criticisms of Anglo-American philosophy and its tendency to agree with metaphysics. It's sort of ironic, because if I'm right there is more anti-science sentiment in Europe, but rather less belief in the metaphysical nonsense that distorts science. I could be wrong at that.


    Glen, it appears that you focus on philosophers when you talk about intellectuals, and this is, in my oppinion, a too narrow definition of intellectuals. There is no doubt that philosophers are among the intellectual elite, but there are large groups of intellectuals in other fields.

    It might be that European philosophers are anti-science, I am not qualified to say, but European intellectuals as a whole, don't strike me as particularly anti-science.
    #: Posted by  on  04/11  at  03:33 AM
  46. This was too funny:

    Failure rates for condoms are commonly quoted, apparently to discourage their use by young people for risk prevention. Mysteriously, the policy doesn't seem able to cite a failure rate for abstinence.


    A failure rate for abstinence? There IS no such thing as a failure rate. If you abstain from sex, you can't possibly get pregnant, get STDs, etc. Maybe the author has fallen for some sort of ancient old wives' tale by which women can get pregnant because of a witch's incantation or something.


    (Hint: Wearing a condom that nonetheless breaks or lets an STD through = a failure rate. There's no equivalent for abstinence. Rather, what the author may have meant is "people who thought about abstaining but didn't follow through," which isn't a failure rate at all. It's equivalent to people who thought about using a condom but got caught up in the heat of the moment. How would you like it if the Bush adminstration classified the latter as a "failure rate" of condoms?)
    #: Posted by  on  04/11  at  07:37 AM
  47. If you add deciding not to use condoms to the failure rate then you still get a smaller figure than for abstinence. Most people who take abstinence vows break them, and abstinence-only education doesn't provide any additional fail-safe points.
    #: Posted by Alon Levy  on  04/11  at  07:57 AM
  48. If you add deciding not to use condoms to the failure rate then you still get a smaller figure than for abstinence.

    That can't possibly be true, unless you're playing games with the definitions. Anyone who has sex without a condom has "decided not to use condoms" and has also decided not to "abstain." How are you computing that one figure is higher than the other?
    #: Posted by  on  04/11  at  09:36 AM
  49. I see no evidence for creationism and lots of evidence for evolution. Still, I wonder if the scientific community is wise to ignore the nature and sources of the creationist challenge to evolution, namely, in the evolutionary psychology of human nature itself? Obviously, most people have deep religious needs. That is certainly an historical fact, and also, perhaps, a biological one. Shouldn't the scientific community show more sympathy and less contempt for this fact, by, for example, being more forthright in acknowledging the limitations of science in the realm of human experience. Facts, to paraphrase Popper, are points of inter-subjective agreement about the external world. They hardly exhaust reality. The power and importance of beauty, pain, love, conciousness itself are quite beyond the ability of science to appreciate or comprehend, and always will be, by their very nature. And yet they are quite obviously, for most people, the most important things of all. Along with pity and hope. Man cannot live by bread alone. A little more humility, please.
    #: Posted by Luke Lea  on  04/11  at  11:15 AM
  50. The “failure rate of abstinence” can be viewed at least two ways.

    Yours, Joe M, “There IS no such thing as a failure rate [for abstinence],” is an expression of one way: If you truly abstain from sex, you can’t possibly get pregnant.

    Granted.

    However blithely you fail to see it, however, there is this valid second way of thinking about it: That if you learn abstinence in school, and you promise to the gods that you’ll abstain, and some large part of you really WANTS to keep your word and adhere to your lessons, in the heat of the moment you can still fail to abstain from sex.

    Think of "the failure rate for abstinence" as verbal shorthand for recognizing that we have built into us a necessity for sex which can be, in its moment, stronger than just about any other drive ... other than perhaps the need to breathe.

    The basic question, seems to me, is: What is it we want to accomplish?

    Do we just want teenagers never to have sex?

    Or are we more interested in limiting the incidence of disease, abortion, trapped, unhappy teenagers, broken families, and unwanted, unloved babies?

    Recognize, Joe, that some of us are more interested in the answer to that second question. Considering our own teen years, to some of us an EXCLUSIVE focus on the first one probably just seems silly.

    Abstinence education is a good idea. An exclusive focus on abstinence as THE one answer, however, is a terrifically bad idea.

    As a side note: The biggest problem someone like me has with abstinence-only education is two-fold.

    First, it rises from a confused motivation. The motivation of protecting teens from unwanted pregnancy and disease is muddied up with the motivation of gaining converts or power for conservative Christianity. As I know all too well, if you don’t know what you really want, you can spend an awful lot of money, time and labor and not get anything useful accomplished. Because the strength of your effort is never FOCUSED.

    Second, the last thing I want in America right now is more power in the hands of a bunch of non-rational screw-ups.
    #: Posted by Hank Fox  on  04/11  at  11:35 AM
  51. Another way to look at it is that every pregnancy contributes to the failure rate for abstinence.

    We could also take the converse view, and regard abstinence as a failure of humanity. We are all sexual beings to varying degrees, and I don't know why we think the norm for teenagers and young adults should be elevated frustration and loneliness and guilt. It's not healthy.
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  04/11  at  12:12 PM
  52. Glen Davidson appears to be using the poststructuralists to completely discard metaphysics.

    Bollocks. If you read "Of Grammatology," probably Derrida's most important book, you can see (I don't have my copy here, unfortunately, so this is from memory): 'It is not a question of rejecting these notions [those of the logos i.e. Transcendental Signified i,e. metaphysical apprehensions of reality that are grounded in unitary Truth]' And this is after he shows how Western thought (I say Western because I recall reading an interview with Barthes where he said that Japan had successfully abandoned the Transcendental Signified) is grounded in the Tr. Sig. through and through, and demonstrates how oppressive this is. He does, somewhat feebly, suggest an alternative--something about a multitude of reflecting pools. But it's not any sort of a viable method of apprehension.

    This is one of the things that irritate me about people who are supposed to be on my side (being a fan of Continental philosophy). Their assumption is, phallogocentrism=logocentrism=oppressive=must be rejected. And yet they don't bother to come up with any other metaphysics or alternative thereto or method by which metaphysics is rendered unnecessary.

    Derrida would shit a brick; after all, he was educated in and remained part of a very rigorous classical tradition, and one can no more appreciate him outside of it than one can take the theory of relativity and use it to say "But hey, man, everything is, like, relative, man."

    As for Sokal and Bricmont, the whole incident is sophomoric. Do American intellectuals really not understand that in a university, the hard sciences and the soft sciences clash? The whole thing is of no more substance than "My dad can beat up your dad!" "Oh yeah? Well, my brother is in the Marines, and I can call him anytime and he'll whup your ass!"

    My personal take on science is quasi-Marxist/Lyotardian: I have nothing against science per se, but in contemporary capitalist society science is a tool of the existing social order designed to perpetuate it.
    #: Posted by  on  04/11  at  07:50 PM
  53. Luke Lea says:
    I see no evidence for creationism and lots of evidence for evolution. Still, I wonder if the scientific community is wise to ignore the nature and sources of the creationist challenge to evolution, namely, in the evolutionary psychology of human nature itself? Obviously, most people have deep religious needs. That is certainly an historical fact, and also, perhaps, a biological one.

    "Deep religious needs" or "deep security needs"?
    "Evolutionary psychology of human nature" or "carefully nurtured and maintained culture"?

    Luke Lea says:
    The power and importance of beauty, pain, love, conciousness itself are quite beyond the ability of science to appreciate or comprehend, and always will be, by their very nature. And yet they are quite obviously, for most people, the most important things of all. Along with pity and hope. Man cannot live by bread alone. A little more humility, please.

    "Beauty, pain, love, conciousness" are not explained by religion. The smell of burning sacrifices was beautiful to the god of the Old Testament, and the highest form of "love" (for your god) included taking a knife to your own son.

    Enlightenment thinking didn't begin some process of removing beauty, love, and conciousness of our lives, although it could be accused of having reduced pain.

    The idea that any part of the human experience is always beyond science should be subjected to serious scrutiny. History shows a long succession of ideas that have been transformed from religious rationalizations into rational natural explanations through application of science. The science of mind and emotion is already in progress. Give it time.
    #: Posted by Virge  on  04/11  at  07:51 PM
  54. Enlightenment thinking didn't begin some process of removing beauty, love, and conciousness of our lives, although it could be accused of having reduced pain.

    The idea that any part of the human experience is always beyond science should be subjected to serious scrutiny. History shows a long succession of ideas that have been transformed from religious rationalizations into rational natural explanations through application of science. The science of mind and emotion is already in progress. Give it time.


    Have you read Alfred North Whitehead? Science and rationality are decidedly not on the same side. I think existentialism, for example, is a supremely rationalistic view (one which also allows for beauty truth etc) but it's about as non-scientific as you can get.

    And sorry, I have to agree with Wordsworth. Explaining Broca's Area to me doesn't enhance the beauty of a poem I read out loud. It cheapens it and turns it into grist for the technocratic mill.
    #: Posted by  on  04/11  at  08:17 PM
  55. No, I haven't read Whitehead's Philosophy of Organism (presuming that's the work you're pointing to). I'm sorry that you've homed in on one word, rational, and decided to argue about it. It seems to me that maybe you've missed the parts of Luke Lea's comment that I found unsupportable. Look again at what he claimed was "historical fact".

    Greg says:
    And sorry, I have to agree with Wordsworth. Explaining Broca's Area to me doesn't enhance the beauty of a poem I read out loud. It cheapens it and turns it into grist for the technocratic mill.

    How could understanding Broca's Area possibly cheapen a poem? Did you just throw in that last sentence for the sake of an argument? There is a big difference between failing to enhance something, and cheapening it. One doesn't have to consider the workings of the human mind to be ineffable to be able to appreciate art.

    If having a part of something explained to you "cheapens" it (which I doubt, since you're a Pharyngula reader), then I suggest you shun explanations of any kind. Your world will be much more magical and unpredictable. To me, understanding how things work enhances my appreciation of them. With the human mind, there is a huge amount yet to be learned by scientific processes before we come anywhere near the limits that may or may not exist due to subjectivism. The time to wonder about the fundamental limits of self-knowedge is when our current scientific processes stop revealing useful explanations. At the moment the main obstructions to gaining more understanding of life are religious and political (back to the point of the post) not metaphysical.
    #: Posted by Virge  on  04/12  at  02:11 AM
  56. My personal take on science is quasi-Marxist/Lyotardian: I have nothing against science per se, but in contemporary capitalist society science is a tool of the existing social order designed to perpetuate it.

    My personal take on your argument is scientific: you have to provide evidence for your claim.

    As for Sokal and Bricmont, the whole incident is sophomoric. Do American intellectuals really not understand that in a university, the hard sciences and the soft sciences clash?

    You do realize the people Sokal launched his initial attack against were Americans, right? Sokal showed that a certain post-modernist journal was a breeding ground for crankery, and instead of castigating the journal, the post-modernist community defended it. Further, you again make a claim without evidence, namely that it is natural for the natural and social sciences to clash.
    #: Posted by  on  04/12  at  10:09 AM
  57. How could understanding Broca's Area possibly cheapen a poem? Did you just throw in that last sentence for the sake of an argument? There is a big difference between failing to enhance something, and cheapening it. One doesn't have to consider the workings of the human mind to be ineffable to be able to appreciate art.


    Perhaps I misunderstood Luke Lea. What I read him as saying was, in effect, that the subjective dimensions of all the things he talks about are quite separate from those dimensions which can be explained by science (the old qualia problem). But perhaps I read too much into him; it didn't occur to me that he could be simpleminded enough to claim that because science allegedly can't look at certain things, it's time to abandon the whole thing altogether and go back to religion. I have nothing against scientific inquiry per se; what I do have a problem with is the smug satisfaction of supposedly having an exhaustive and superior worldview, something that many religious people have in common with many atheists (it is significant to me that actual scientists tend not to be so adamant about science explaining or even needing to explain everything). But yes, I do apologize: I thought you were pushing science as a replacement for the things Lea mentioned.

    My personal take on your argument is scientific: you have to provide evidence for your claim.


    There's enough literature on the subject to fill a small library, but I believe a few examples and elaborations suffice in this context. Science is, first and foremost, driven by researchers at universities; today, much of the money that they receive comes from corporations. The research that is done under the aegis of corporate sponsorship is actively prevented from doing anything to challenge the interests of the corporation: the obvious tobacco research comes to mind, but there are innumerable other cases (e.g. there's evidence that a certain hormone causes cows to milk better, but the research that was done was funded by a company that makes a different milk-increasing product, which the research showed to be virtually ineffective, and the company forced the researchers to alter their findings in such a way that their product appears to cause a large portion of the yield increase). Another example is the Bell Curve and other attempts to equate intelligence with effectiveness in a work context: a large percentage of the population is dismissed as worthless (or unintelligent, or undeserving of aid) because of their inefficiency in a rationalized workplace. It's pretty clear to anyone who has had experience with real people that IQ scores, success in life, and a high degree of wisdom, intelligence and enlightenment (or at least a rich inner life) are often mutually exclusive. And finally, since science that isn't theoretical physics is normally focused on increasing the rationalization of everyday life, that function in itself supports the ruling technocracy (if you really think technocracy is dead, you are deluded; there isn't anything that prevents the ruling order from combining magic and technocracy, like Hitler's Germany did, and in some ways Soviet Marxism).

    You do realize the people Sokal launched his initial attack against were Americans, right? Sokal showed that a certain post-modernist journal was a breeding ground for crankery, and instead of castigating the journal, the post-modernist community defended it. Further, you again make a claim without evidence, namely that it is natural for the natural and social sciences to clash.


    Yes, I am intimately familiar with the whole story of Transgressing the Boundaries. But the fact is, Social Text isn't a peer-reviewed journal. It was designed to avoid what was perceived to be the restrictive nature of the peer review process and allow the authors' credentials to speak for themselves; Sokal is a respected physicist, and the journal was running a special issue on science, so his article (which nevertheless sounded fishy) was a godsend. Academia is to a great extent founded on trust: the trust that your credentials give you some weight, the trust that your work is original, the trust that your citations are accurate, the trust that your sources are legitimate, the trust that your methodology is accurately represented, the trust that your studies actually took place, and, though this doesn't even need to be said, the trust that you DON'T DELIBERATELY COMMIT SABOTAGE. It's like a football player being bribed to play badly by the other team the night before a game and then acting surprised that his teammates thought he was on their side. And there have been violations of this trust in hard-science journals too: look up the Bogdanov affair for a recent and particularly egregious example.

    But that's all beside the point, I think. You say that I didn't give evidence for my assertion that it is natural for them to clash. My evidence is necessarily anecdotal and based partially on personal experience, because what I am talking about is a social and intellectual rivalry between individuals of different affinities. To clarify, I was not arguing that there is something inherent in the sciences themselves that causes them to clash, merely the fact that the soft scientists often consider the hard scientists to be rigid, smug, and naive, while the hard scientists often consider the soft scientists charlatans, useless sophists, and insufficiently rigorous. I've seen this at Moscow University (where my parents attended and my father teaches) and any number of American schools. To forestall your objection, yes, this is not enough evidence, but if you haven't observed the social dynamic between the departments it won't be enough anyway, and if you have, then you know I'm right.
    #: Posted by  on  04/12  at  03:37 PM
  58. Of course, since I am an idiot, I mean "humanities" by "soft science." Chalk it up to lack of sleep.
    #: Posted by  on  04/12  at  03:50 PM
  59. Oh, and I was talking about Whitehead's "Science and the Modern World," which is at least applicable here. Philosophy of Organism I couldn't even get through.
    #: Posted by  on  04/12  at  04:55 PM
  60. No, Greg, I use Nietzsche and other thinkers to discard metaphysics. I know the mistakes made by Derrida and other phenomenology-influenced thinkers, which is why I mentioned Deleuze and others more favorably. Deleuze is closer to Nietzsche, thus doesn't re-invent the quasi-miraculous processes seen in Derrida. Anyway, as I noted, Europe has moved on, Derrida becomes more of an American mistake as time goes by.

    Deleuze has little use for metaphysics, and this is true of a number of other continental post-structuralists. If you don't know that Greg, at least get out of your pulpit.

    And Kristjan, I mentioned the philosophers because they tend to influence intellectuals. And I really didn't mean to imply that intellectuals on either side of the ocean were very much anti-science, as I believe that the post-modernists like Deleuze have moved more toward positions from which one may do science. But there's still some leftism in European intellectualism that we almost totally lack here, and if it is more compatible with science than it used to be, it's still not where I'd prefer it to be.

    Well I did stay away from this thread until now, when few if any will read it. But because I got tired on the Panda's thumb of the constant claims by metaphysicians that metaphysics is needed by, or at least useful to, science, and didn't want to expend the effort of duplicating the excellent criticisms of metaphysics by others, I found a good link. So I pasted it in at Panda's Thumb, and thought I might as well do so here as well, since I already hunted down the link. So for any search engine hits that might take place, here's a good critique of metaphysics:

    http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ayer01.htm
    #: Posted by  on  04/13  at  02:35 PM
  61. I find it funny that you're such a fan of Deleuze. I've only read the Anti-Oedipus, but it seemed to me to be a load of utterly fanciful garbage that combined self-evident statements with unsupported extrapolations (eg: Freud addressed himself to the Viennese bourgeois, therefore he's totally bourgeois and by extension the Oedipus Complex is a tool of the Bourgeois Man)

    Ayer doesn't really impress me. Okay, you can reduce your own language to verifiable statements. But there will always be people questioning our own position in the universe, finding alternatives to naive realism, trying to determine just how much we can know--and even if someone doesn't actively look for these things, e still takes them for granted. Simply because he calls them nonsense doesn't remove that as a field of inquiry, nor does it prevent phenomenology from being consistent and ringing true (example: Sartre's description of the role of consciousness as essentially negative with respect to the in-itself). Not to mention the fact that verifiability is likewise subjective (witness the debates over the role of direct revelation in proving the existence of God).

    Ayer also brings up language, conventiently ignoring the fact that his own use of it eliminates certain phrases that are not at all nonsensical (there is no way to falsify the statement "Yesterday I thought I was mad at my mother, but it was just because I had had a bad day").

    You don't like metaphysics, that's fine. But that doesn't mean they're nonsense, despite what Ayer might think.
    #: Posted by  on  04/13  at  03:47 PM